Github Actions Runner for Docker and AWS

Description

This will build the new self-hosted github actions runners. It is built with packer and builds Docker images and Amazon AMIs. The packer template is derived from the GitHub project and various pieces needed to make the Docker or AWS images work.

Docker Hub
AWS AMI - because the AMI is based on the Official AWS Marketplace Ubuntu AMIs, the results of this build process cannot be made public. Building the Ubuntu via a seed file is possible, if someone wants to contribute a PR.

History

Originally found at myoung34/docker-github-actions-runner with ideas from tcardonne/docker- github-runner.

The project by @myoung34 focuses on a minimal installation of tools. There the guiding principle is to create the most basic docker image necessary to run GitHub actions. The advantage to following that principle is that developers can then declare and configure their tools as they see fit, and don't have to "fight" the runner to get things arranged properly.

The guiding principle of the GitHub hosted runners follows a different path, more of an "everything, including the kitchen sink" approach, where almost any tool and SDK have already been installed and are ready for use out-of-the-box. The majority of the installation scripts used by the GitHub Hosted runners are re-purposed here via a submodule pointing to GitHub's actions/virtual-environments.

In keeping with the actions/virtual-environments setup, the runner's home directory is /home/runner.

Docker image size:

Compressed: 19G+.
Uncompressed: 50G+.

systemd services

There are three systemd units:

github-runner-install - downloads and installs the latest version of the GitHub Runner. Wanted by github-runner-config.
github-runner-config - configures the recently downloaded GitHub Runner. Wanted by github-runner.
github-runner - Runs the recently installed and configured GitHub Runner.

Each of the above services relies on a /etc/github-runner-env file for the runner configuration environment, as well as /etc/environment for the various hosted tools environment.

AWS AMI

The AWS AMI also ships with systemd template units designed to support multiple runners. These look for environment files in /etc/github-runner-env-%i, where %i is the identifier used when instantiating the service.

Docker-in-Docker

This Docker image is designed to run Docker-in-Docker as a non-root user, and therefore expects to use a mount /var/run/docker.sock as that user. That can be an issue if the docker group in the container has a different GID than the group in the host. To get around that, the container detects the GID of the bind-mounted socket, and if that GID doesn't exist in the container, creates a dockerhost group and adds that group to the runner user.

Because of the nature of Linux user and group membership, and the fact that the runner user doesn't START with the dockerhost group membership, you will see a message like this at startup: "groups: cannot find name for group ID 969," where 969 is the GID of the docker group on the Docker host. The container will run just fine, with the correct permissions. However, if you want to get rid of that message, run the container with the --group-add=$(stat -c 'g%' /var/run/docker.sock) command.

❗ In order to run the container on a host that has SELinux installed and enabled, and the Docker daemon has been started without disabling it, you MUST start the container with --security-opt=label=disable.

A note about systemd in Docker

The GitHub-hosted runner is built to run on Azure, and as such is designed around a fully-functioning systemd init system, with DBus and UDEV available to help manage IPC and devices. Without these services, some basic functionality isn't available. For instance, without UDEV, the snapd service has significant issues.

This isn't such a big deal in the AWS AMI image, but for Docker, it's much more challenging. The upstream docker-systemd is built and available on Docker hub. Make sure to go there and read about it if you're curious how systemd is arranged to work in Docker.

Packer Build

In essence, the final outcome of the build is to create a github-runner Docker image or AMI, whether for Bionic (18.04) or Xenial (16.04).

AWS

aws-base.json:

This resets the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg default_user from ubuntu to runner.

{
    "variables": {
        "runner_user": "runner",
        "access_key": "{{env `AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID`}}",
        "secret_key": "{{env `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`}}"
    }
}

This is merged with virtual-environments/images/linux/ubuntu1N04.json "parent" packer file, in conjunction with aws-add-provisioners.json, aws-replace-inline.json and replace-scripts.json to generate a final template used for building the AMI.

aws-ubuntu1N04.json:

{
    "variables": {
        "vcs_ref": "",
        "runner_home": "/home/runner",
        "access_key": "{{env `AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID`}}",
        "secret_key": "{{env `AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY`}}",
        "image_folder": "/imagegeneration",
        "commit_file": "/imagegeneration/commit.txt",
        "imagedata_file": "/imagegeneration/imagedata.json",
        "metadata_file": "/imagegeneration/metadatafile",
        "installer_script_folder": "/imagegeneration/installers",
        "helper_script_folder": "/imagegeneration/helpers",
        "image_version": "dev",
        "image_os": "ubuntu18",
        "github_feed_token": "{{env `GITHUB_TOKEN`}}",
        "go_default": "1.14",
        "go_versions": "1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14"
    }
}

Docker

Adds the default runner user, and sets it up for password-less sudo.

docker-base.json:

{
    "variables": {
        "runner_user": "runner",
        "runner_group": "runner",
        "runner_uid": "1000",
        "runner_gid": "1000",
        "runner_home": "/home/runner"
    }
}

This is merged with virtual-environments/images/linux/ubuntu1N04.json "parent" packer file, in conjunction with docker-add-provisioners.json, and replace-scripts.json to generate a final template used for building the Docker image.

docker-ubuntu1N04.json:

{
    "variables": {
        "vcs_ref": "",
        "build_date": "",
        "runner_uid": "1000",
        "runner_gid": "1000",
        "runner_home": "/home/runner",
        "commit_url": "{{env `COMMIT_URL`}}",
        "docker_username": "{{env `DOCKER_USERNAME`}}",
        "docker_password": "{{env `DOCKER_PASSWORD`}}",
        "image_folder": "/imagegeneration",
        "commit_file": "/imagegeneration/commit.txt",
        "imagedata_file": "/imagegeneration/imagedata.json",
        "metadata_file": "/imagegeneration/metadatafile",
        "installer_script_folder": "/imagegeneration/installers",
        "helper_script_folder": "/imagegeneration/helpers",
        "image_version": "dev",
        "image_os": "ubuntu18",
        "github_feed_token": "{{env `GITHUB_TOKEN`}}",
        "go_default": "1.14",
        "go_versions": "1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14"
    }
}

Environment variables

The following environment variables allow you to control the configuration parameters at runtime.

Name	Description	Default value
`RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL`	The runner will be linked to this repository URL	Required
`ACCESS_TOKEN`	Personal Access Token with `repo` access	Required if no `RUNNER_TOKEN`
`RUNNER_TOKEN`	Personal Access Token provided by GitHub specifically for running Actions	Required if no `ACCESS_TOKEN`
`RUNNER_WORK_DIRECTORY`	Runner's work directory	`/home/runner/work`
`RUNNER_NAME`	Name of the runner displayed in the GitHub UI	Hostname of the container
`RUNNER_REPLACE_EXISTING`	`true` will replace existing runner with the same name, `false` will use a random name if there is conflict	`"true"`
`RUNNER_LABELS`	Labels to use on the runner. See the docs.

GitHub Runner Environment

Example runtime environment:

ACCESS_TOKEN=SOMEACCESSTOKENHERE
AGENT_TOOLSDIRECTORY=/opt/hostedtoolcache
ANDROID_HOME=/usr/local/lib/android/sdk
ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=/usr/local/lib/android/sdk
ANT_HOME=/usr/share/ant
AZURE_EXTENSION_DIR=/opt/az/azcliextensions
BASH=/bin/bash
BASHOPTS=cmdhist:complete_fullquote:extquote:force_fignore:hostcomplete:interactive_comments:progcomp:promptvars:sourcepath
BASH_ALIASES=()
BASH_ARGC=()
BASH_ARGV=()
BASH_CMDS=()
BASH_LINENO=([0]="0")
BASH_SOURCE=([0]="/home/runner/work/_temp/c81a8b82-bc01-4725-8443-1d03ae1e8308.sh")
BASH_VERSINFO=([0]="4" [1]="4" [2]="20" [3]="1" [4]="release" [5]="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu")
BASH_VERSION='4.4.20(1)-release'
BOOST_ROOT_1_69_0=/usr/local/share/boost/1.69.0
BOOST_ROOT_1_72_0=/usr/local/share/boost/1.72.0
CHROMEWEBDRIVER=/usr/local/share/chrome_driver
CHROME_BIN=/usr/bin/google-chrome
CI=true
CONDA=/usr/share/miniconda
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
DIRSTACK=()
DOTNET_SKIP_FIRST_TIME_EXPERIENCE=1
EUID=1000
GECKOWEBDRIVER=/usr/local/share/gecko_driver
GITHUB_ACTION=run1
GITHUB_ACTIONS=true
GITHUB_ACTOR=rbellamy
GITHUB_BASE_REF=
GITHUB_EVENT_NAME=repository_dispatch
GITHUB_EVENT_PATH=/home/runner/work/_temp/_github_workflow/event.json
GITHUB_HEAD_REF=
GITHUB_JOB=test-self-hosted
GITHUB_REF=refs/heads/master
GITHUB_REPOSITORY=terradatum/test-workflows
GITHUB_REPOSITORY_OWNER=terradatum
GITHUB_RUN_ID=87759165
GITHUB_RUN_NUMBER=4
GITHUB_SHA=74d8e792549145ab96cd707d9fb9ddf5bc2fc917
GITHUB_WORKFLOW=.github/workflows/test-self-hosted.yml
GITHUB_WORKSPACE=/home/runner/work/test-workflows/test-workflows
GRADLE_HOME=/usr/share/gradle
GROUPS=()
HHVM_DISABLE_NUMA=true
HOME=/home/runner
HOSTNAME=81b1ff544971
HOSTTYPE=x86_64
IFS=$' \t\n'
ImageOS=ubuntu18
ImageVersion=dev
JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/adoptopenjdk-11-hotspot-amd64
JAVA_HOME_11=/usr/lib/jvm/adoptopenjdk-11-hotspot-amd64
JAVA_HOME_12=/usr/lib/jvm/adoptopenjdk-12-hotspot-amd64
JAVA_HOME_13=/usr/lib/jvm/adoptopenjdk-13-hotspot-amd64
JAVA_HOME_8=/usr/lib/jvm/adoptopenjdk-8-hotspot-amd64
JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Dfile.encoding=UTF8
LEIN_HOME=/usr/local/lib/lein
LEIN_JAR=/usr/local/lib/lein/self-installs/leiningen-2.9.3-standalone.jar
M2_HOME=/usr/share/apache-maven-3.6.3
MACHTYPE=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
OPTERR=1
OPTIND=1
OSTYPE=linux-gnu
PATH=/usr/share/rust/.cargo/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/home/runner/.dotnet/tools:/home/runner/.config/composer/vendor/bin
PPID=72
PS4='+ '
PWD=/home/runner/work/test-workflows/test-workflows
RUNNER_HOME=/home/runner
RUNNER_NAME=linux-test-workflows
RUNNER_OS=Linux
RUNNER_REPLACE_EXISTING=true
RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL=https://github.com/terradatum/test-workflows
RUNNER_TEMP=/home/runner/work/_temp
RUNNER_TOKEN=SOMERUNNERTOKENHERE
RUNNER_TOOL_CACHE=/opt/hostedtoolcache
RUNNER_TRACKING_ID=github_8f2a9954-f948-49aa-995b-a287e72cddc9
RUNNER_WORKSPACE=/home/runner/work/test-workflows
RUNNER_WORK_DIRECTORY=/home/runner/work
SELENIUM_JAR_PATH=/usr/share/java/selenium-server-standalone.jar
SHELL=/bin/bash
SHELLOPTS=braceexpand:errexit:hashall:interactive-comments
SHLVL=2
SUPERVISOR_ENABLED=1
SUPERVISOR_GROUP_NAME=runner
SUPERVISOR_PROCESS_NAME=runner
TERM=dumb
UID=1000
VCPKG_INSTALLATION_ROOT=/usr/local/share/vcpkg

Runner auto-update behavior

The GitHub runner (the binary) will update itself when receiving a job, if a new release is available. In order to allow the runner to exit and restart by itself, the binary is started as a systemd service. This also takes care of zombie reaping since systemd is running as PID 1.

Platforms

This has been tested and verified on:

x86_64

Examples

Manual:

docker run -d --restart always \
  --group-add=$(stat -c '%g' /var/run/docker.sock) \
  --security-opt=label=disable \
  --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN \
  --device=/dev/fuse \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
  -v /dev/hugepages:/dev/hugepages \
  -v /sys/fs/fuse/connections:/sys/fs/fuse/connections \
  -v github-runner:/home/runner \
  -e RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL="https://github.com/terradatum/repo" \
  -e RUNNER_NAME="foo-runner" \
  -e RUNNER_TOKEN="footoken" \
  --name=github-runner \
  terradatum/github-runner:latest

Or as a shell function (as root):

*Note: the "lite" functions use the self-hosted runner from myoung34/docker-github-actions-runner.

function github-runner {
    org=$(dirname $1)
    repo=$(basename $1)
    name=github-runner-${repo}
    tag=${3:-bionic}
    docker rm -f $name
    docker run -d --restart=always \
        --group-add=$(stat -c '%g' /var/run/docker.sock) \
        --security-opt=label=disable \
        --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN \
        --device=/dev/fuse \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
        -v /dev/hugepages:/dev/hugepages \
        -v /sys/fs/fuse/connections:/sys/fs/fuse/connections \
        -v github-runner:/home/runner \
        -e RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL="https://github.com/${org}/${repo}" \
        -e RUNNER_TOKEN="$2" \
        -e RUNNER_NAME="linux-${repo}" \
        --name=$name \
        ${org}/github-runner:${tag}
}

function github-runner-pat {
    org=$(dirname $1)
    repo=$(basename $1)
    name=github-runner-${repo}
    tag=${3:-bionic}
    docker rm -f $name
    docker run -d --restart=always \
        --group-add=$(stat -c '%g' /var/run/docker.sock) \
        --security-opt=label=disable \
        --cap-add=SYS_ADMIN \
        --device=/dev/fuse \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        -v /sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup:ro \
        -v /dev/hugepages:/dev/hugepages \
        -v /sys/fs/fuse/connections:/sys/fs/fuse/connections \
        -v github-runner:/home/runner \
        -e ACCESS_TOKEN="$2" \
        -e RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL="https://github.com/${org}/${repo}" \
        -e RUNNER_NAME="linux-${repo}" \
        --name=$name \
        ${org}/github-runner:${tag}
}

function github-runner-lite {
    org=$(dirname $1)
    repo=$(basename $1)
    name=github-runner-${repo}
    tag=${3:-bionic}
    docker rm -f $name
    docker run -d --restart=always \
        --security-opt=label=disable \
        -e REPO_URL="https://github.com/${org}/${repo}" \
        -e RUNNER_TOKEN="$2" \
        -e RUNNER_NAME="linux-${repo}" \
        -e RUNNER_WORKDIR="/tmp/github-runner-${repo}" \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        -v /tmp/github-runner-${repo}:/tmp/github-runner-${repo} \
        --name=$name myoung34/github-runner:${tag}
}

function github-runner-lite-pat {
    org=$(dirname $1)
    repo=$(basename $1)
    name=github-runner-${repo}
    tag=${3:-bionic}
    docker rm -f $name
    docker run -d --restart=always \
        --security-opt=label=disable \
        -e ACCESS_TOKEN="$2" \
        -e REPO_URL="https://github.com/${org}/${repo}" \
        -e RUNNER_NAME="linux-${repo}" \
        -e RUNNER_WORKDIR="/tmp/github-runner-${repo}" \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        -v /tmp/github-runner-${repo}:/tmp/github-runner-${repo} \
        --name=$name myoung34/github-runner:${tag}
}

function refresh-all {
    CONTAINERS=$(docker ps -a -q --filter "name=github-runner" --format="{{.Names}}")
    for c in ${CONTAINERS[@]:-}; do
        [[ "$c" == *"github"* ]] && docker stop "${c}"
        [[ "$c" == *"github"* ]] && docker rm "${c}"
    done
    docker rmi terradatum/github-runner:latest
    for c in ${CONTAINERS[@]}; do
        [[ "$c" == *"github"* ]] && github-runner-pat "${c/github-runner-/terradatum\/}" $1
    done
}

github-runner your-account/your-repo       AARGHTHISISYOURGHACTIONSTOKEN
github-runner your-account/some-other-repo ARGHANOTHERGITHUBACTIONSTOKEN ubuntu-xenial

# Or to refresh all the current runners
refresh-all AARGHTHISISYOURGITHUBPERSONALACCESSTOKEN

Nomad:

job "github_runner" {
  datacenters = ["home"]
  type = "system"

  task "runner" {
    driver = "docker"

    env {
      RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL = "https://github.com/your-account/your-repo"
      RUNNER_TOKEN   = "footoken"
    }

    config {
      privileged = false
      image = "terradatum/github-runner:latest"
      volumes = [
        "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock",
        "github-runner:/home/runner",
      ]
    }
  }
}

Kubernetes:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: actions-runner
  namespace: runners
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: actions-runner
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: actions-runner
    spec:
      volumes:
      - name: dockersock
        hostPath:
          path: /var/run/docker.sock
      - name: runnerhome
        hostPath:
          path: /home/runner
      containers:
      - name: runner
        image: terradatum/github-runner:latest
        env:
        - name: RUNNER_TOKEN
          value: footoken
        - name: RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL
          value: https://github.com/your-account/your-repo
        - name: RUNNER_NAME
          valueFrom:
            fieldRef:
              fieldPath: metadata.name
        volumeMounts:
        - name: dockersock
          mountPath: /var/run/docker.sock
        - name: runnerhome
          mountPath: /home/runner

Usage From GH Actions Workflow

name: Package

on:
  release:
    types: [created]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: self-hosted
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v1
    - name: build packages
      run: make all

Automatically Acquiring a Runner Token

A runner token can be automatically acquired at runtime if ACCESS_TOKEN (a GitHub personal access token) is a supplied. This uses the GitHub Actions API. e.g.:

docker run -d --restart always --name github-runner \
  --group-add $(stat -c '%g' /var/run/docker.sock) \
  -e ACCESS_TOKEN="footoken" \
  -e RUNNER_REPOSITORY_URL="https://github.com/terradatum/repo" \
  -e RUNNER_NAME="foo-runner" \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v github-runner:/home/runner \
  terradatum/github-runner:latest

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 100 Commits
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
.run		.run
etc		etc
installers		installers
virtual-environments @ 8b72149		virtual-environments @ 8b72149
.gitignore		.gitignore
.gitmodules		.gitmodules
AWS-Ubuntu1604-README.md		AWS-Ubuntu1604-README.md
AWS-Ubuntu1804-README.md		AWS-Ubuntu1804-README.md
Docker-Ubuntu1604-README.md		Docker-Ubuntu1604-README.md
Docker-Ubuntu1804-README.md		Docker-Ubuntu1804-README.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
actions-runner-config.sh		actions-runner-config.sh
actions-runner-install.sh		actions-runner-install.sh
aws-add-provisioners.json		aws-add-provisioners.json
aws-base.json		aws-base.json
aws-replace-inline.json		aws-replace-inline.json
aws-root.json		aws-root.json
aws-ubuntu1604.json		aws-ubuntu1604.json
aws-ubuntu1804.json		aws-ubuntu1804.json
docker-add-provisioners.json		docker-add-provisioners.json
docker-base.json		docker-base.json
docker-entrypoint.sh		docker-entrypoint.sh
docker-ubuntu1604.json		docker-ubuntu1604.json
docker-ubuntu1804.json		docker-ubuntu1804.json
merge-packer-templates.py		merge-packer-templates.py

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Github Actions Runner for Docker and AWS

Description

History

systemd services

AWS AMI

Docker-in-Docker

A note about systemd in Docker

Packer Build

AWS

Docker

Environment variables

GitHub Runner Environment

Runner auto-update behavior

Platforms

Examples

Usage From GH Actions Workflow

Automatically Acquiring a Runner Token

About

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jonico/github-runner-1

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Github Actions Runner for Docker and AWS

Description

History

systemd services

AWS AMI

Docker-in-Docker

A note about systemd in Docker

Packer Build

AWS

Docker

Environment variables

GitHub Runner Environment

Runner auto-update behavior

Platforms

Examples

Usage From GH Actions Workflow

Automatically Acquiring a Runner Token

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